


At Least I've Still Got a Tongue

by Molly_Hats



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Canon-atypical violence, Episode: s03e23 Greg and Larry, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Revenge, Season 3 Finale, Torture, Whump, internalized ableism, kneecapping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-05-07 02:59:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: When Jake is kidnapped, the list of suspects is pretty short--but so is his life expectancy.  The Nine Nine races to save their friend, but even if they succeed, how will they survive the damage?Takes place during Season 3, Episode 23





	1. Chapter 1

Jake stepped into his apartment, flipping the lightswitch. The lights stayed off. “Aw, dangit, did the neighbor blow a fuse?” He stepped further into the room, nimbly following the path he always kept clear for such an occasion, and reached out for a lamp. His fingers never reached it. 

Something slammed into the back of his head, sending him sprawling. He yelled in surprise. Large hands grabbed him from behind, hauling him upright.

“Help! Hel—“ a hand clamped over his mouth. He bit at it, struggling in the dark. He kicked out, his foot snagging the cord of a lamp, and yanked. The lamp crashed to the ground, the cheap metal and plastic bouncing on the linoleum. 

“Shut him up! We’ll have time later, just get him out of here!”

Jake felt a gag being forced into his mouth, and someone shoved a bag or cloth of some sort over his head. 

“We’ve got him. Move.”

——

Some time later, after what seemed like an endless car ride where Jake’s bound arms and legs fell asleep, he was unceremoniously pulled from what felt like a trunk and thrown to the ground on his side. His arms and legs burst into an explosion of pins and needles at the sudden impact on his cut off circulation, and he couldn’t hold back a grunt.

“We got him, boss.” 

“And you’re sure you weren’t followed?” 

Jake’s blood ran cold as a suspicion crept over him. He didn’t recognize the voice, but he knew who wanted to kill or hurt him. 

“Pretty sure. We switched our cars around, and the guy lives alone.”

Jake felt a rough tug on the hood, and cracked his eyes so he could better adjust. In a sequence of jerks, a weathered, old-looking hand pulled it off of him, letting the side of his head bang on the floor. He squinted up at the man who could only be Figgis, who smiled sadistically down at him.

“Hello, Peralta.” He ripped the gag out roughly, like a dog owner trying to pull a toy from their pet’s mouth.

“Hi?” Jake said almost sheepishly, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar at a friend’s house.

“I assume you know why I had my men bring you here.”

“You found out it was my birthday and you knew Boyle would tell me so you decided to come up with a different venue for a surprise party?” He said, smiling hopefully.

Figgis kicked him in the stomach, hard, digging in until Jake could feel the steel toe of his boot. The boss knelt and grabbed a fistful of Jake’s hair, forcing Jake to pull himself up by his neck. “Try again.”

“Oh,” Jake laughed nervously, “Are you still hung up about that whole ‘busting-your-FBI-contacts’ thing? Because I thought we’d be laughing about that by now, I mean—“ 

Figgis slammed Jake’s head into the floor, twisting it to land face-first. Jake felt blood begin to flow from his nose. “I think you’ll find I’m not the forgiving type.”

At a loss for a clever retort, Jake settled for breathing through his mouth as blood gushed sideways from his nose, the metallic taste and smell of it surrounding him, blending with the throbbing pain, the sticky, red blood and snot and dirt blending together. He’d had bloody noses before, of course. Rosa liked to remind him of that time he did a chin up and was so proud he promptly hit his nose on the bar. In winter, his nose would get dry and occasionally bleed for no reason, causing some problems on dates. He almost laughed at the memory of Amy’s horrified, panicked face as she scrambled for a napkin or something to keep him from bleeding onto the table, and settled for her own cupped hands. She walked backwards to the bathroom, where he’d then turned around and made a mad dash for the sink, emerging with a clean face and bloodstained lapels. A good memory, but bloody.

Figgis took a large set of shears and sliced through the jeans on his legs from the bottom cuff to above the knee. He pulled them back in flaps and set down the knife. “The gun,” he said to one of his associates. They handed him a handgun Jake couldn’t ID. “Hold him down.” 

“What are you doing?” Jake asked, straining to see as Figgis moved back, stepping over him. He felt a pressure on the back of his knee, cold metal on the bare skin. “No, please—“ He couldn’t help begging, he couldn’t, he didn’t, he needed---

BANG! 

Jake screamed as the bullet ripped through the back of his knee, ricocheting off his kneecap. He felt as though it had exploded into splinters and frayed nerve endings, annihilated and too-damn-painful, and he knew it was probably not as bad as it felt but only because it felt so-damn-awful. 

He calmed down from the scream, his eyes watering, quietly sobbing, his nose running and bleeding and hurting.

“My friends...they’re cops, they’re onto you…” He said in between wet gasps.

“Bit late for that, Jakey,” Figgis said cheerfully. He poked the injured leg, drawing a shriek, then placed the gun to the side of the kneecap and fired again. He waited for the screaming to subside, Jake’s eyes barely open against the pain. 

“By the time they get here, you’ll be dead and I’ll be long gone. Or if you’d rather, we could hang around.” He stood up and leered down at Jake. “You grew up without a father, right? So many kids in the Nine Nine nowadays…I’d hate to put any orphans on your conscience.” 

Figgis nodded to one of his associates. “Make sure he doesn’t die,” he ordered a slim man in a suit, who slowly and deliberately stripped off his suit coat. “I’m not done with him.”

The man moved forward and began to clean Jake’s knee. Mercifully, Jake blacked out.

\-----

“Jake won’t answer his phone,” Amy said. “He hasn’t sent me any I love you texts or strings of random emojis or weird selfies…” She bordered on hysterical, but she was deadly serious as she stared Boyle in the eye. “He’s in trouble.”

“Okay, Amy, maybe his battery just died or--” Charles looked down at his phone in horror. “I told him what we found out about our baby--his name is Nikolaj, he’s from Latvia, I’m gonna be a popa!--and he hasn’t said anything! For hours! He hasn’t even read it!”

“I’m going to his apartment,” Rosa said, standing up behind the two panicked faces. “If you guys won’t do anything about it, I will. You’re too reliant on your stupid phones.”

\-----

Jake woke up tied to a chair by his ankles, wrists, and one large strap around his torso. He looked down at his knee and quickly away again: bone fragments jutted through the skin of his leg, the joint a misshapen mess, his lower leg hanging on by a thread and the swollen, dark purple bruising where his kneecap used to be. 

Figgis entered the room and glanced at his henchman, who nodded affirmation to something. Figgis poked the darkened spot with his finger and smiled as Jake grimaced.

“What do you even want with me?” Jake asked.

“Me? Oh, I’m a simple man with simple needs. I run a business, and you threatened that business. So you can’t just die, no, you need to set an example. I need you to suffer for what you and your captain did to me, Jake. I want the poor bastards who come in here to find your body to vomit like small-town rookies. I want your Captain to be ripped to shreds for letting this happen--if not by the NYPD, then by his guilt. I want your girlfriend to forget your face outside of her nightmares.” He crouched by Jake’s head. “I want you to become synonymous with the fear of crossing Figgis. I want you to be a damn horror story.”

“Oh. So you want to be a Batman villain.”

“I want you,” Figgis said, smacking Jake across the face and setting his nose bleeding again, “to stop being a smartass.”

Jake smirked through his black eye and blood and tear streaked face. “Okay, now you’re just talking crazy. Which is good, if you’re a Batman villain.”

Figgis pulled a switchblade from his pocket and flipped it open. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

\------

“We need to find him,” Amy said unnecessarily. “Dammit, how long would Figgis keep him alive?”

“Long enough to draw Holt out.”

“Unless he’s planning on murdering Jake to get to me.”

They all turned to Holt, who set his glasses on the corner of his desk. Amy watched his jaw clench. She’d never seen him like this--every bit of body language she’d ever seen him show came out at once.

\-----

“Shit!” Boyle hissed. “It’s a bomb! Rosa, Amy--”

“On it,” Rosa said. She pulled out a set of tools and started working. “You guys get Jake out in case this turns ugly.”

Boyle nodded and ran off.

\-----

Jake didn’t know how long it had been--hours, days, weeks? (Probably not weeks). Rosa had told him, one time at the academy, about psychological techniques--not allowing a victim a clock, keeping them off balance and shaky, unsure of even the most basic facts. (They’d been friends a very short time. It was a rather disturbing development, but pretty cool. He’d swapped movie trivia for her rather upsettingly wide base of knowledge on interrogation and brainwashing techniques.) 

His name was Jake Peralta. He didn’t know how long he’d been there. He was a detective for the NYPD, Precinct 99, Brooklyn. He had a wonderful, badass girlfriend named Amy Santiago, who was no doubt searching for him right now, along with Rosa Diaz who hated Figgis more than anyone and Charles Boyle who was gonna be a Poppa and Raymond Holt who had called him “son” once, and Terry Jeffords who could kick anyone’s ass if the need arose and Gina Linetti his childhood friend and even Scully and Hitchcock, who got out of a hostage situation with their powers of sweating and going literally anywhere in a rolling chair. 

He thought about them instead of the pain: Holt telling him he was proud of him after the whole ordeal, Amy crying and kissing him on the forehead and the hands and the lips and laughing and helping him fill out the paperwork, Rosa detailing what she’d do to Figgis when she caught the son-of-a-bitch, Charles telling him about his kid, sometimes an infant girl, sometimes a little boy, one time a hulking teenager who resembled Terry, daydreams blending into true dreams. 

“FREEZE! NYPD!” 

Jake’s head snapped up before he could stop it, the stabbing pain from a number of cuts and bruises sweeping over him in response. The door to his room came crashing down, letting in light and a figure. She raced over to him, Jake barely daring to hope before he heard the wonderfully familiar voice. 

\-------

“Oh my...Jake…!” Amy whispered as she caught sight of the mangled wreckage of his leg. 

“It’s bad, isn’t it,” Jake said, smiling the same old Jake smile through the blood. “Sorry to ruin the reunion. I know you were looking forward to running into each others’ arms and kissing like a Nicholas Sparks movie…” 

“Jake,” Amy repeated, breathing deeply to calm herself and immediately regretting it as the taste of blood filled her mouth through the air. A wave of nausea swept over her. “Terry’s coming, he’ll get you out of here, alright?”

“Good old...Terry…”

“All you have to do is stay awake,” Amy said. She pulled out a knife and began sawing at the rope around Jake’s torso. 

“Yeah...sure…”

Amy let the first rope go and started on the ones on his wrists, making short work of them. “What the hell did he do to you?”

“Freeze!” 

Amy froze. 

—————

The coatless first aid man from earlier emerged, holding a gun. “Move away from him, keep your hands where I can see them. Drop the knife.” 

Amy obeyed, lowering the weapon slowly and turning to him. “Our squad is here, you don’t want to do this. You don’t have to throw your life away on a cop murder.”

The man approached Amy, finger on the trigger. Once near, he flicked the safety on with one motion and whipped the barrel across Amy’s face. She fell backward with a sharp cry. 

“Amy!” Jake couldn’t hold back. He was so tired, he hurt so much, and now Amy was here and she got hurt and it was all his fault.

“Freeze! NYPD!”

Terry’s voice, and Jake felt the fear and the joy take flight at the same time. He shoved himself toward the door, but he was still tied up by his legs and so he just sagged out of the chair, his shattered knee still held up. He screamed in pain as he nearly blacked out. 

“Jake! Hang in there, buddy,” Terry said. 

Jake moaned in protest as he felt the last ties on his ankles slip away and Terry’s arms (they could only be Terry’s arms) scooping him up like he was nothing. 

“We’re taking you home,” Terry said. “It’s okay now.”

And in the moments between when Terry said that and when Jake finally lost consciousness, Jake understood why Terry was such a good dad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loosened my kneecap doing color guard, and it hurt like hell and made a) walking and b) existing an arduous experience. I can’t imagine the pain of an actual bullet going through that, especially to intentionally hurt.
> 
> I channeled so much finals angst into this, guys, I don't think I've been this productive over the course of a 36 hour period since NaNoWriMo. Next up: recovery.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy gets Jake up to speed while Terry, Rosa, and Boyle try to get Figgis' medic to talk.

Something nearby was beeping. 

That was the first thing to filter through Jake’s drug-induced haze. It was a vaguely familiar sound. Where had he heard it before…? 

Memories from seemingly a lifetime ago filtered in, vague and disjointed. Bob. Scrubs. A stretcher. The chase. Terry yelling something about needing “ccs” of something.

Jake felt heavy. A bone-tired, weighty clumsiness that reminded him of long weeks and long hours after the adrenaline rush of all-nighters blew over. He tried to pry his eyes open, feeling like something was shoving them down, like they’d rusted shut. How long had he had them closed? How long was he out? Where was he?

He tried to move, inertia and exhaustion pressing him back down onto the sheets. He managed to spread his arm a bit, smacking it into a plastic rail. Tubes brushed across his arm with the movement, and he felt them tugging at his arm. IVs.

With exaggerated gusto to make up for his slowness, he imitated Holt in his mind: _Thus, the solve: I’m in a hospital._ Feeling more awake, he squeezed his face up and opened his eyes, blinking to separate his upper and lower lashes.

His head was tilted to the side, giving him an excellent view of the array of wires attached to his arm. _Peralta, you’re a genius._ When his gaze drifted past it, though, his brow furrowed and he tilted his head back in confusion.

Or rather, tried to tilt it. His head remained stubbornly planted on the pillow. 

The wall beyond was covered in unfamiliar, old-looking floral wallpaper, a pattern of dozens of different types of painted flowers that Amy could probably identify by Latin name surrounded by leaves on a white background. They climbed up the walls like they were on a...a crossed-board thing, and Jake amused himself for a moment by trying to figure out where the pattern repeated itself.

The beeping increased in speed as Jake scrambled to reconcile this new detail with the idea of the hospital. Maybe Brooklyn Methodist got a generous donation from an out of business wallpaper factory. Maybe this was Amy’s apartment--the wallpaper seemed to be her style, at least. Maybe Figgis had a sudden change of heart and brought him back to his mom’s place for a quick patch-up in the spare medical bed. 

He had to see what was going on on the other side of the room. He tried to turn his head, leading with his chin as he strained. A thin groan of effort escaped his throat, sounding deafening in the room. Trying to work up momentum, he pulled his chin up and over and shoved it back into the bed, then back up and over and back. Eventually, he built up enough energy to push his head all the way over, grimacing in a silent wish as he teetered between the sides before finally flopping over to the other side.

He grinned at his own ingenuity for a moment before he saw that he wasn’t alone. In a chair by his bedside, fast asleep with a binder perched precariously on her lap, was Amy Santiago.

He froze, drinking in the sight of her. She was a mess: her long black hair, usually slicked back into an immaculate ponytail, poofed around her head and across her face in a frizzy mess that reminded him of First Movie Hermione. (He was midway through it when she insisted that he read the books first.) She was wearing her glasses instead of her contacts. Her hands, weakly pinning the binder in place, were chapped, topped with ragged and uneven nails.

She looked absolutely gorgeous.

Curious, Jake squinted at the binder, trying to read the words hidden by her hands and upside-down. There were pictures by the sides, and he looked to those for hints. There was a grey lineart of a calendar with a small clock next to it and similar art of a checklist. The rest was hard to decipher or covered by Amy’s arm, so he started in on the hard part.

There was an “r,” there, next to her finger, and then that was an “a,” and a “p,” and Jake had suspicions that were only confirmed by the next three letters (“i-s-t.”)

Amy’d been talking about the upcoming training session for helping survivors of sexual assault. She must’ve made a binder.

Amy inhaled, and the binder finally sagged out of its misery, clattering to the floor on its thick metal rings. Amy started awake, jerking upright and meeting Jake’s eyes.

Jake smirked.

“Jake! You’re awake!”

“You’re a poet and didn’t know it,” Jake rattled off, raspier than he expected. He coughed. “Can you get me some water? Please?”

Amy nodded, scrambling out of her chair. She walked over to a large pitcher and poured some of it into a glass. She held it to his lips and gently tipped it back until he held up a hand for her to stop.

“Thanks,” he said. “Where are we?”

“Safe house in Newsburgh,” Amy said immediately.

“How long was I out?” Jake asked. 

“Well, you woke up in time for surgery, but I’m not sure you’d remember that,” Amy said. “We moved you here from St. Luke’s.” 

“Surgery?” Jake said. “On what?” A throbbing pain erupted in his knee. “Oh.”

Amy gulped, taking several strands of her enormous hair and starting to braid it. “Your knee… Jake, they couldn’t save it.”

Jake blinked. “So, what, I’ve got like...a metal knee now?”

Amy squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Jake…” She stood up, taking the corner of the blanket and pulling it back slowly, revealing his left leg and an empty space where the lower half of his right leg should have been.

Jake stared at it, his mouth moving of its own accord. “Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool cool. No doubt, no doubt.”

* * *

The bullpen was unusually quiet that morning when Terry entered. Jake and Amy were gone, but it was more than that. Everyone else was more subdued.

Charles picked at a plate of pasta absently as he stared past a case file on his desk. He looked up as Terry walked by. “Terry, wait!” he said earnestly.

Terry stopped. “What?”

Charles reached under his desk and pulled out a half-finished bottle of orange soda labeled “Jake.” “I--we--found this in the office fridge.”

“And…?”

Charles pressed it at him, the contents audibly slapping against the sides. “We should put it to good use, don’t you think?” He raised and wiggled his eyebrows mischievously.

“You’re not suggesting we drink that?” Terry said in horror, his brow furrowing in distaste.

Charles’ face immediately fell into a look of disgust. “No! Look, Jake pours some of this on the table in the interrogation room because it makes it sticky and gross and throws them off, you know?”

Slightly less revolted, Terry took the bottle. “I’ll consider it.”

“Make him proud, Terry!” Charles commanded solemnly.

Terry nodded, equally grave, and made his way to the interrogation room. His job was, after all, to prepare the place for the medic.

* * *

Terry rested his hands on the table in the interrogation room, trying not to let his irritation and tension show. Across from him, Figgis’ medic shifted nervously.

The perp’s name was Ethan Roberts. He had hair that was somewhere between red, blond, and brown that Gina almost definitely had a weirdly specific name for. He was 25, struggling through the tail end of medical school despite being flat broke with worse credit than Jake. To handle the crushing debt, he’d gotten involved in Figgis’ drug empire. Once he got in, he couldn’t get out, and that career trajectory had landed him on the sticky side of the table in the Ninety Ninth precinct’s second interrogation room. 

Terry glanced down at the file on the table that detailed Roberts’ crimes. “We have you as an accomplice to kidnapping, assault in the first degree, and assault in the second degree. On top of that, you managed to rack up assault in the second degree _and_ menacing an officer all by yourself when you attacked and threatened Detective Santiago.” He grabbed one hand in the other and peered at Roberts with his eyebrows raised. “You’ve got yourself in a lot of trouble.”

Roberts stared at his cuffed hands and said nothing.

“You’re looking at years in jail, as I’m sure Detective Diaz has already explained to you.” He resisted the urge to turn back to the one-way glass through which Rosa was watching.

Roberts continued to simply stare at his hands.

“However, if you tell us about Figgis, we may be able to negotiate a lighter sentence for you.”

Roberts shook his head.

“Figgis is on his way out,” Terry said. “We took down over 75 of your coworkers. Your boss left you to take the fall for him. He’s panicking and losing control.”

Roberts frowned. “Then why would you need my testimony?”

“We need locations, Ethan--may I call you Ethan?”

Ethan shrugged noncommittally.

“Figgis is good at avoiding capture. He may not have the influence or power he used to, but he _does_ still have escape strategies we hope you can help us with.”

“You don’t know him.” Ethan leaned forward, his shirt sticking on the edge of the table. He looked up for the first time. “You don’t know what he’ll do to me.”

Terry met his eyes, noticing that they were wide and green.

“We can place you in witness protection,” Terry offered. “Give you a new identity in Florida.”

“He has moles in the FBI,” Roberts said. “He’ll find me.”

“Not anymore,” Terry said. “Unless there are more we should know about.”

Roberts slumped back, his shirt pulling away from the table with a “shwipp.” He shook his head.

Terry stood up, picking the file up off of the desk. “I can guarantee that Figgis doesn’t care about your well being. He left you to rot, and that’s assuming he’s not currently trying to take you out before you have a chance to tell in the first place. We can protect you.” Terry spread his hands. “I’ll let you think about it.”


End file.
